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Forty top designers descend on Melbourne for the agIdeas 2013 International Design Week

Speakers at International Design Week include renowned typographers, photographers, couturiers and choreographers, as well as advertising gurus and marketing strategist. If you’re interested in the creative side of design, here are Time Out’s top picks from the program:

1. Melbourne designer Leah Heiss blends art with nano-engineering to build responsive garments and hand held devices. Her high-tech, high-emotion designs include delicate jewellery which can be used to deliver insulin to diabetics, and wearable ECG transmitter/receivers that let you feel the murmur of your friend’s heartbeat, even though they’re not with you.

2. When it comes to textiles the Japanese do it better. Reiko Sudo and her team at NUNO combine traditional and high-tech materials and processes – like silk that’s been salt-shrunk or fused with tin foil – to produce remarkable fabrics that are held in art museums around the world (and in the closets of a lucky few).

3.Roger Dean’s album covers for Yes, Asia, Pink Floyd and other 70s bands are prog personified: dragons, wizards, warriors, intergalactic gardens, fantasy landscapes, whatever this is. Dean’s iconic ‘Lord of the Rings in space’ aesthetic, which still informs his design practice, is more memorable than many of the bands he worked for.

4. Also known for his collaborations with the British music scene, Ian Anderson’s studio The Designers Republic defined the demented face of the 1990s UK electronic music scene – think of the weird, rowdy album covers for War Recrods artists like Autechre and Aphex Twin, as well as Moloko, The Orb andPWEI.

5. French fine arts professor and graphic designer Alain Le Quernec is best known for his dynamic posters in the tradition of Polish Poster School greats like Henryk Tomaszewski. Since the 1970s Le Quernec has resisted plying his trade for advertisers, working exclusively for political and cultural clients.